


Threads That Hold Us Together

by specspectacle



Category: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Genre: An evolving concept of self, Boundaries, Broken Families, Character Death, Childhood Memories, Complicated Relationships, Difficult Decisions, Don’t copy to another site, Emotional neglect, Evolving relationships, Family Issues, Father-Daughter Relationship, Flashbacks, Gen, Getting to Know Each Other, Mental Link, Pre-Into the Spiderverse, Psychic Bond, Referenced combat/violence, Spider bites, Unethical Experimentation, background relationships falling apart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-10
Updated: 2019-07-10
Packaged: 2020-06-25 18:40:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19751530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/specspectacle/pseuds/specspectacle
Summary: Peni Parker isn't the first person to pilot the SP//dr mech. No, originally it was her father's mech.Her father conceived the idea, brought it from concept to near fruition only to be stopped in his tracks by a very stubborn arachnid, who's very annoyed that it didn't get a say in the matter. Learning to co-exist and work together on a deadline is a thing they can do, right?~~~Peni Parker deals with the aftermath of her father's death. The one thing she's going to learn shortly is that she'll always have someone in her corner.





	Threads That Hold Us Together

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to HopelesslyLost, who listened to me ramble about the idea that ended up turning into this and beta'd it and has been absolutely kick-ass about everything, and LadyTorix, who's had to listen to me yammer about Spiderverse on our walks and kindly beta'd it, too!
> 
> I feel like I might have had more to put here but, for the life of me, i can't remember what it was.

In the beginning, the Spider had been alone, enclosed in blank white walls. Food would be put into the enclosure at regular intervals and for a time there was nothing more pressing than making its web and molting as it grew. Then the enclosures’ walls had changed, become transparent. The Spider had looked out at this expanded world with interest. There were things out there, enormous, strange things that didn’t have the right number of limbs. They were largely incomprehensible and the Spider ignored them until it started to lose time. It would be on one part of its web, then wake to find itself on the floor, and where it had been prior would be slightly tattered. That was when the Spider began to know fear.

And as time went on the Spider began to realize that it understood more and more of what was going on outside it’s enclosure. It knew that the large, previously incomprehensible creatures were humans, and that the ones here were scientists, were working on experiments. It was then that the spider realized it was an experiment, it had to be here. It began to recognize the Man, the one human that spent the most time in the lab. Others came and went, but this one seemed constant.

The Man spent incomprehensible amounts of time working on a collection of metal and circuits that slowly began to take shape into a bipedal form. The Spider watched it grow and felt an itch of recognition, hazy and insubstantial. There was something about it, about some of the pieces scattered around that were familiar. A memory of the Spider trying to move and instead of its own leg responding, something large and foreign had moved, instead. A metal limb so much exponentially larger than itself that the Spider had retreated into itself. 

And The Man talked. Constantly. Recognizing the patterns of the speech, then the words took time, but every so often as the Spider found itself losing time, the information seemed to flow more easily, connections made faster, though connecting the sounds to the concepts it found itself understanding was still beyond it. It still didn’t know what the human wanted or why he kept disturbing it and its web, or what the point of the mechanical thing taking shape was.

Then one day, when the mechanical thing was mostly done, the Spiders’ enclosure opened, unfolded out, tearing the Spider’s web apart and the man’s hands descended as the Spider scuttled backward. They were so large, it wanted nothing to do with them. And then, there was nowhere to go, they were too close, they were t-o-u-c-h-i-n-g it. 

And the Spider sank its fangs in and everything. Went. White. 

-

There were voices, words, language, vibration. The Spider could suddenly understand all the voices around it at once. The scale for everything was wrong, the perspective was wrong. The way it was positioned wasn’t natural. Sounds were too loud. Colors were too loud, its vision swam and overlapped dizzyingly. Why was there so much overlap, why was it seeing a human from this vantage point? It felt like it was falling and there were hands reaching for it. 

The Spider felt its alarm crescendo to terror at the hands and it was mirrored by a rising confusion from something that wasn’t itself as everything got louder and more overwhelming and then. Stopped. 

-

Waking felt different. But everything was quiet and calm. Its head throbbed and its stomach cramped. Something tasted awful. Its eyes focused on the wall? Ceiling? Something about the way it was positioned, what was surrounding it was so off the Spider nearly discounted it. Why was there pressure on it’s back? What was wrapped around it? Why couldn’t it feel it’s limbs properly?

Trying to move brought a stab of panic as nothing responded. Then, as the Spider focused, a memory that at once seemed familiar and foreign floating in its mind’s eye. Fear and panic melting in the wake of meditative, reflective breaths as a warm hand gripped his shoulder and eased him down to sit loosely on the mat, a calm voice talking him through his panic attack, before asking him if he was ok and if he wanted to try again. 

As the memory played through the Spiders mind, its body moved, shifting almost on its own, rolling over until it was sitting up. Everything hurt. The Spider’s mind stuttered to a stop at how strange it felt, the odd pull and dense weight of muscles and bones, the way it had moved when it wasn’t focused on the movement. It was unnerving how the body responded without conscious direction. 

This was. This was a human body, the Spider realized as the hands came up and hovered in front of its face, turning as it examined them. That was. That was the hand that had grabbed at it when this whole nightmare began, the Spider recognized the bite, the position of it, the two little marks where its fangs had driven into one of the digits. 

This was the Man. It was in the Man's body and it had no idea what was going on. Pulling its attention away from the hands and trying not to focus on how it was moving the body. (It was...wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Not enough limbs, the center of gravity was all wrong, how did these bipeds balance on two little limbs??? Everything was too soft, the cloth wrapped around it too warm and constricting, it could feel it’s heart and other internal processes as nonsense vibrations at the back of its mind). There were things on its arm, they stuck and itched and pulled and it hurt when the Spider fumbled and tugged them off with clumsy fingers as nearby machines started to squeal and beep in alarm.

Turning its head, the Spider looked around the room. It was small and white. There was the soft platform it had been lying on- a table, cabinets lining one of the walls. On the wall opposite the cabinets there was a door. And on one wall there was a reflective surface. The Spider stared. The Man’s face stared back, messy dark hair and brown eyes and slightly crooked nose all looked so strange from this new perspective.

The door opened and the Spider jerked around to stare at the door, hissing threateningly, and immediately overbalanced and fell off the platform, landing in an awkward crouch. The woman in the doorway gasped, jerking backward. She held a transparent box containing. Itself. The Spider recognized the form moving erratically in the enclosure. The form in the box seemed to freeze as it spotted the human crouched on the floor.

Then. it was like being slammed into by some giant hand and the body’s hammering pulse was all it could hear, even drowning out the blaring of the machines. Its vision started to get that awful overlap, then everything went dark.

-

This time when it woke, everything made sense, everything felt right. This was its body, this was its home, it was normal to wake up like this. It wasn’t some horrible nightmare where it was a hairless biped with too few limbs and a horribly loud, soft body. The Spider stretched its legs and looked around its enclosure. 

Its web was gone, which was distressing, but there were...other things in it now. More colorful and soft, the Spider recognized them as flowers and blocks and bits of bark and twigs. Then had to stop and wonder at that recognition. It had never been outside. It had never seen any of these before. The Spider carefully explored the first flower, touching the petals with gentle forelimbs and pedipalps.

‘You’re awake.’

It was the Man. The Spider froze, casting about and then scuttled under the cover provided by a piece of bark learning against another flower. No, no, no, The Man was not touching it again.

‘I can hear you.’

It was words, a voice. But it wasn’t coming through the air. It was just there, in its mind, loud and obnoxious.

‘Are you just going to ignore me?’

‘What are you doing in my mind?’ The Spider’s answering thought was bitter and sharp, and it felt some affronted surprise from the Man.

‘Of course I’m in your mind, you bit me, that was the whole point.’ The Man sounded smug, ‘I made you, you’re part of the CPU of the mech I built. The mind link is so I can pilot it. We’re going to fight crime.’

The Spider’s thoughts stuttered to a halt. The entire concept was absurd. Even if the Man had made it, that didn’t mean the Spider wanted anything to do with the Man’s intended purpose. No one had asked it, no one had even considered that it might not want anything else in its mind and the Man, so far, was proving to be obnoxious and disagreeable. It hadn’t wanted to be an experiment, let alone part of a crime-fighting mech. Whatever  _ that _ was.

Admittedly, it hadn’t wanted much of anything at all before the bite, other than to be left alone.

It seemed that wasn’t going to happen now. The Spider hissed, raising its forelegs and thorax in a threat display to emphasize its vehemence. If the mech only worked with the Spider’s cooperation then all it needed to do was not cooperate. 

‘No.’

The Spider had made its decision. 

-

The Man had seemed a constant presence in the lab before but now he really was, staying overnight on the futon against the wall nearly every night. His work seemed slow and aimless. He would take things apart and put them back together just for something to do. There had been hissed conversations over the phone that had risen to shouting and, once, the Man had thrown the phone against the wall in tears. 

That had been a conversation the Spider wished it hadn’t been party to. The other participant had sounded so disgusted that the Man had tied himself to “a dumb insect,” her voice rising over the frustrated correction. It hurt more than the Spider had expected. 

The Man was a constant presence in the back of its mind, too, always there. Frustration and irritation bled across the link, though it didn’t feel as if it was directed at the Spider unless the Man’s attention was on it. Any time the Spider felt the Man’s mind reaching out it hissed imprecations and pulled away, avoiding contact. 

The Man had tried weedling, whining, promises…  _ Threats, _ even, as the Spider felt desperation grow and grow across the link as the weeks went by. It had come to a head on a day when a very formal group of people had come in to discuss the SP//dr project with the Man. The Spider had listened intently, ignoring their meaningless vibrations for the heart of the discussion: the future of the project. 

If the Man couldn’t get the mech up and running there would be consequences. The project would be decommissioned or handed to someone else for review. There would be dire consequences for him for being unable to follow through on some agreement. The Spider had noted with vague interest that the Man didn’t tell them why the project had ground to a halt. That the Spider’s refusal to cooperate was the sole impediment. It wondered if he was so desperate to maintain control of the project that he would actively sabotage it until he could convince the Spider to cooperate.

The excuses and justifications that the Man threw at the officials were so much chaff, hiding the real problem. The Spider knew there weren’t any problems with the ambulatory systems or the CPU, or anything else. All the systems showed neat “All good” status’ when it bothered to review that part of its mind. All systems save one, at least. That last one would require its cooperation. 

The Spider watched the Man’s shoulders slump as the group left, frowning and unsatisfied but giving the Man more time. The last one stopped the door from closing and looked back at the Man, eyes narrowed before looking at the Spider’s enclosure with speculative look on her face before looking back at the Man with raised brows and a sympathetic murmur. She let the door close with a quiet  _ snick _ as she turned and stepped out.

As the door closed, the Man had turned and walked stiffly to the futon against the wall, collapsing face down on it with a groan and making a flicking gesture at the security cameras. 

The link hung open between them and the Spider didn’t bother to close it. Nothing the Man thought would change its mind. It could feel the Man’s racing thoughts as a distinct hum, occasionally flitting into the Spider’s mind. The emotions roiled with the memories as the Spider felt everything wash through it, pouring over the link. There was a woman and affection and something else… There had been anticipation. At one point there had even been joy. Then there had been fear and desperation and hesitancy over a difficult, difficult choice proposed, then made. 

Everything flickered past the Spider’s mind’s eye and it hunkered down, unable to block the link, absorbing everything for the first time since they had been connected. The thoughts and emotions had a distinct tang of desperation and fear, anxiety that made it want to huddle in a dark corner.

Time passed strangely as the emotions and memories crashed in a torrent through them, no longer just a one way flow. It was only as the Spider fought its way out and pulled itself from the slowing roil of emotions and memories flooding through it that it realized the Man had been crying. He had drifted into an exhausted asleep and tears still leaked from his eyes onto the sizable damp patch on his sheets. This wasn’t calculated or intended to influence it. It was a breakdown.

What the Man had told it the first time they were properly communicating hadn’t been entirely true, it realized. Fighting crime had not been the only point of the mech. That had been bravado masking fear.

There was a painful moment as the Spider reviewed everything it had absorbed and realized that the Man was as trapped here as it was. He had signed himself away, it seemed, for the money to support his partner through the complications of her pregnancy. 

It had worked, the money had enabled her to undergo a procedure that stabilized the woman and the pregnancy. The Spider got the sense that she very well might have died if left untreated. Apparently neither had wanted to discontinue the pregnancy and try again. The Spider shied away from those emotions. There had been grief and horror and fear, and desperate, desperate want. They had both wanted the little life she carried to thrive.

This had been what spurred the Man to rush to complete the SP//dr mech, to rush the project. The project had been started but there had been no end date, no real expectations, no rush. And then the fear had led him to make the promises that pushed the project into overdrive, that had ended with them tied together. The hotshot scientist-pilot had caught them in a web of tightening expectations.

The Spider caught the taste of a memory to do with itself, and weighed the thought, then let the memory slide over it. The first thing it noted was the affection. It was warm and soft and directed at a tiny spiderling just toddling across the floor of it’s enclosure. That was. That was itself. 

The Spider recognized the pattern from the Man’s more recent memories. Other images drifted past, feedings, molts, spinning webs, augmentations, the rounds of testing, syncing the Spider up with the mech to ensure the connection was strong, that the Spider could control it. There was warm pleasure, pride, fear that something would go wrong… it was too much.

It had been easier to think that the Man had done all of this out of some desire for glory or ego. Having it thrown in its face that the Man had other, more painful reasons for why he was pushing so hard... But. they weren’t its reasons. They might hurt, but they didn’t affect the Spider. It hadn’t been asked. Maybe if it was asked and was given a solid argument, it might be different. If it was treated like the thinking being it was…  _ Maybe. _ But right now, no.

Though The Man wasn’t aware to hear it, the Spider reiterated its refusal.

-

Time continued to pass. the Man left the lab more frequently. He had stopped trying to talk the Spider into agreeing entirely after that group of officials left. After his breakdown the Man had woken up and he’d felt the Spider’s presence in his mind, felt how much had flooded over the link in that cascade of tears and emotions.

And he had apologized. For everything. The lack of choice, for ignoring certain ethical considerations, for putting them both in this situation.

The Spider had almost slipped from its web in shock at the words, the feelings coming over the link. They were wrung out and bare. An almost painful honesty. It took a moment for the Spider to pull it’s thoughts together.

‘Why?’

If the Man felt any shock at the mental contact, the Spider couldn’t see it from its vantage point.

‘Because I’ve made so many stupid decisions recently. And, and you’re already dealing with more than one of them. We both are, really. But- it’s my fault.’

The Man took a shuddering breath, ‘You already got a good look at everything last night, I think. But. I’m going to have a daughter.”

Standing, the Man came over to the Spider’s enclosure and pressed the releases, then winced at the Spider’s hissed displeasure as its web was pulled apart, ‘Sorry, sorry… I wasn’t thinking. I just thought that it wasn’t fair, you being stuck in there all the time.’

The Spider eased out of the cranny it had backed into at his approach, tentatively approaching the edges of the enclosure and stepping over. It was annoying that it would have to rebuild the web again but no matter, exploring the lab was a far more interesting prospect. The surface tasted strange after so long in the enclosure but it wasn’t bad, ‘... Thank you.’

The Man’s head dipped in a nod as he hesitated, his feet shifting, ‘Do you want a lift over to one of the tables?’

The Spider stopped. Trepidation rose at the thought of being anywhere near those hands and it washed over the link. They were too large, too close, closing it. The Man flinched and stepped away, going slightly shaky as memory hit him. The bite. He collapsed in a chair and clutched his knees, curling over to press his face into them, his breath suddenly shifting into a measured rhythm that the Spider recognized.

The Spider shuddered as the memory slipped into its head. The bite had hurt. Remembered pain echoed along the link and the Spider flinched at the memory of collapsing, spasms, of his throat closing and not being able to breath. That was why The Man had been in the medical bay when it had woken up in his body.

It hadn’t been an easy connection for either of them.

‘I’m sorry,’ came raggedly through the link once the Man’s shaking had stopped.

‘It’s-it’s fine,’ it wasn’t fine, but the Spider couldn’t think of anything that would change that, and lying seemed to be an automatic thing it was picking up from The Man. It wasn’t sure how much it liked that or what the point was. The Man knew it was a lie, intended to spare his feelings from the moment the thought slipped over the link.

‘You are going to have a daughter,’ the Spider prompted. Anything to stave off the thought of hands. 

The Man looked up, pulling himself together with a visible effort. The Spider could feel him marshalling his thoughts before they slipped out in a jumbled wave, ‘Yes. She’s part of why I’m doing all this. That complication… Her mother and I didn’t have the money for the procedure to fix what went wrong. Doing this seemed the best way to get the funds. This project had already been proposed for a faster timeline earlier and I’d. I’d turned them down because of testing and ethical considerations. There were more conditions when I came back to them and accepted.’

The Man ran his hands through his hair at the Spider’s prodding. There was more to it than that.

‘I just- It feels like everything is falling apart now. She hasn’t even been born yet and her mother and I aren’t even together anymore. She saw some of the security footage from the medical bay, when you had control of my body. She thinks the psychic link is horrifying. She didn’t want a “bug in a man's body” to be touching her, she said,’ he hiccuped, scrubbing at his eyes, ‘I thought she loved me, and I thought I loved her. And it just  _ hurts, _ now, when I think of her.’

The Spider sent a wash of calm. That  _ sounded _ an awful lot like the person the Man had been talking to before he threw his phone at the wall that time. A short, choked laugh answered the Spiders’ thought.

‘That’s her, that’s Myra. And we both wanted to have this child so much. I did all this,’ he gestured around the room, ‘I signed that contract, I tied us together so Myra and I could have her. And now Myra doesn’t want much of anything to do with me. And I’m afraid that she isn’t going to want our daughter, either. And the project is dead in the water, it feels like.’

‘I don’t know that I can take care of a baby with everything here. They’re giving me a grace period until a few weeks after her birth to get the project back on track. If I can’t, they’ll have me on something else and. I definitely won’t be able to take care of her with that. And you’ll be decommissioned.’

There was real pain in the last thought, the Spider noted distantly. It hadn’t thought it meant so much to the Man.

‘Of course you matter to me!’ The thought was sharp, proud in a way, ‘I put a lot of time and research into making you, and you’re more than I imagined you’d be. It was a shock, just how distinct a personality you have. And I was an asshole, rushing things and making assumptions… And I hurt us both.’

The Man’s laugh was short and bitterly self-deprecating, ‘You should have had a choice in whether to make the connection at all. And now I feel like I’ve ruined everything. I’ve lost the relationship I had, and I’m pretty sure I’m going to lose you and my daughter, and everything I’ve put into this project over the last six years.’

The Spider didn’t have anything to say to that and they lapsed into silence. The Man had eventually gotten up and left the lab, leaving the Spider to wander and explore the space to its heart’s content. Food had been somewhat tricky, but the Spider found that if it returned to the enclosure, food was still released and all it needed to do was arrange a web at the entry point.

And then the weeks had passed. The Man didn’t try to touch it or move it. They talked and it got easier to exist together, to share a space. The Spider made several webs and The Man didn’t touch them, didn’t get near them, even.

The Man’s mood improved, he and Myra were talking again and she wanted him there at the birth, which was coming up. The Spider did a quick calculation. It would be very soon, it thought. 

The Spider stiffened as a wash of emotions came flooding through the link. Fear, excitement, trepidation. They all came with some very specific imagery and the Spider adjusted its calculation. Now. Now seemed to be the time.

And the Spider had waited and felt the Man’s emotions over the link. There had been images flashing quicksilver through its mind that it ignored, though it did distantly note the small, loud red-faced bundle the Man held in his arms. The Man seemed happy and it warmed the Spider.

Then everything crashed. Horror and,  _ 'nonononono,' _ echoing together over the link. Desperation as the Man bargained with the woman who’d just given birth, the mother of his child. He’d take the girl if she didn’t want her. Why was she doing this? Hadn’t they both wanted to have the child? 

The Spider rocked on it’s eight legs as the fear and determination flooded through it, as it found itself swept up, piggybacking along with the Man, seeing through his eyes and feeling the strangeness of bipedal locomotion.

It didn’t matter that he didn’t have the facilities or his own home anymore, didn’t have anything prepped. He didn’t want to lose his daughter, and if she went into the foster care system, what chance did either of them have to be a family? He knew what that was like. He’d been through it himself with Ben. He had money and there were interns, he could. He could make arrangements, he could have the things he needed there in the lab when she was released from the hospital. Or maybe they could stay with Ben and May?

There were phone calls upon phone calls as he held his daughter cradled in one arm. Her mother had held her for all of five minutes then handed her to him and expressed her indifference toward the infant. He didn’t know what had changed in Myra, but he had had nothing but excitement over the thought of a child, a daughter, a brand new person to love. He had always had a lot of love to give. 

Myra had given him a loopy, irritated look when he had started to cry. He didn’t know what had happened. Things had seemed to be getting better- there was no rekindling the relationship, but he’d thought they’d be able to co-parent still. 

He looked down at the infant in his arms, she was all wrinkled and squashed and red and perfect just the way she was. The doctors had made some noises about something that he’d brushed aside. He had recognized what it was, but it was window dressing. It could be addressed later, if at all. The child was healthy and they could sort out anything else later. He could apologize for any assumptions and they’d work it out and it’d be fine.

But now she needed a name. He blinked, startling as he realized that he and Myra hadn’t thought of any names. They hadn’t discussed it at all after everything with the bite. A distant chill ran down his back at the memory and he curled around his daughter. The chair he sat in was uncomfortable, but it was better than standing. It was better than being anywhere near Myra.

He looked at the little face and considered, scrunching his nose up to mirror the sleeping infant’s expression. He’d always liked alliteration… Maybe Penelope? Pualani? Petra? He shook his head.

Peni Parker. He blinked as the name flitted into his head and looked down at the newborn in his arms. She looked like a Peni, he thought with a laugh, and it’d make Ben sigh and pinch the bridge of his nose. And it was an alternate spelling of ‘Penny’ if anyone thought anything of it at all. 

Standing, he blinked as he looked around the ward. The nurse had told him that when he was done to let them know and there would be a place set up where he could take his shirt off and he and Peni could do the skin-to-skin contact thing and he could try feeding her.

She hadn’t latched onto Myra before she had been handed off, but the nurses had said they’d have something ready for her and that they’d show him how to do things. That was a laugh. He’d certainly done research, but actually feeding a baby was another thing entirely, apparently. He appreciated the offer, they had to have a lot more experience with this sort of thing.

Turning toward the nurses station, he felt a shift in the back of his mind and realized the Spider was there, close as thought, with a taste of wonder in its mind. It was a little startling, but more than ok, ‘You alright?’

The Spider stirred, curiosity bleeding through, ‘She’s so small.’

He laughed as he found the nurse he’d talked to earlier and she led him to the room, gently rocking Peni, ‘She really is. You know, you’ll be able to meet her soon, I hope.’

‘I think I’ll like that,’ The Spider felt oddly hushed admitting that, and he spent a moment wondering at it before the thought was swept away in the wonder over his daughter as she blinked dark eyes up at him.

-

It was several days before the Man was due back in the lab, to be accompanied by his infant daughter. During that time, the Spider watched with interest as interns brought in and set up a whole array of things that it had never encountered before or seen through the mental link. Higher ups would occasionally come in and huff at everything but the Spider ignored them, focusing on laying down lines of silk and building a new web spanning the room above human head height, much to the human’s consternation. 

Splitting its attention, it followed everything the Man was doing. Infant humans required so much attention and energy and the woman, Myra, seemed to have totally washed her hands of both her former partner and their daughter. There were classes, tests, the infant needed to be okayed to leave the hospital. There was far more paperwork than the Spider had anticipated. It tried not to get too close to the Man’s thoughts so it wouldn’t be sucked in again. It had been nice but strange. The Spider wanted more time before it happened again. 

Once the web was mostly done, it had even investigated the mech, slipping in the partially open door and walking across the control panels and pilot-seat, looking at the monitor before climbing up and inching its way into eerily familiar passages leading to a space that felt terrifyingly right, like it belonged there. It felt connected, like it had finally found a piece of itself that it hadn’t known it was missing. Unlike controlling the Man’s body that one time, this felt far more natural. Despite the mech’s upright posture, it didn’t feel ungainly or awkward. It felt. Right.

The central control area was oddly similar to the enclosure it had first been in. But there was so much  _ more- _ everywhere the Spider looked relevant information flooded its mind. Weapons systems, life support, equilibrium and so much more. There were so many sensors. There was so much. For a moment the Spider was lost in thoughts of what it could do with the mech. It was obvious that it didn’t need the Man just to use the mech, to move it, but combat would definitely require the two of them.

The Spider was pulled from its contemplation of the mech’s abilities as it became aware of a commotion that had been gradually getting closer in tandem with the Man’s rising emotions, nagging for its attention. The Spider had gotten so used to the abrupt emotional shifts that kept occurring over the last week, shoving them to the side to avoid becoming mired in the Man’s secondhand emotions.

It was only when the sliding door somehow slammed open to a flood of people that the Spider’s attention was properly caught. The Man came in, spikes of panic and anger rolling through the link, followed by some of those same higher ups that the Spider had seen earlier in the week. There was Myra and May and Ben and a stranger that the Spider couldn’t identify at first, followed by several people in security uniforms. One of the higher ups had a bruising grip on Myra’s arm, and absolutely no one looked happy.

The Man cast about the room, fear roiling as he didn’t find what he was looking for and the Spider shivered, wanting to curl into a ball. He stopped, ignoring the officials who kept talking, and took several deep breaths as he looked down at the infant in his arms. The Spider’s limbs loosened as the Man started to regain control of his emotions and reached out with a questioning thought.

‘Spider…? Spider, where are you?’

‘I’m here. What’s… what’s going on?’ The Spider reached, hooking into the information network through the mech’s systems and hesitated. What should it look for? What was the context for what was happening?

‘It’s- They’ve shifted the deadline up, and didn’t notify me until now. Today’s the last day for the SP//dr mech project. If I don’t get it working today, then it’s going to be decommissioned or given to someone else… I’m  _ sorry, _ I’d been hoping I could make it work without your participation, but there’s no chance now. And there’s no way I can get you out now, they’ll be watching for it.’

The Man kept looking around the lab before gazing down at his daughter, shifting her in his arms, hugging her gently and stroking her hair, ‘And they’ve basically forbidden me from taking care of Peni even if somehow I do get the mech working. They changed the contract. I can’t raise her in the lab- it’s not “suitable.” I’d have to have a home out of the compound, and I don’t have the funds for a house or apartment right now,’ helpless pain rang in the thoughts, ‘Ben and May aren’t in a position to take her. If Myra won’t take her, I’m afraid she’ll end up in the foster system and I’m afraid I’ll never see her again.’

The Man’s pained certainty puzzled the Spider, there had to be other options but. It didn’t have enough experience with humans, know enough about them to really say or suggest anything. The Man was the only human it had really interacted with. It had certainly never talked to any of the others. Maybe it didn’t have the best idea of humans or what they would do or want to do in this situation.

One of the officials stepped forward, hand grabbing the Man’s shoulder roughly and pulling him around, “You need to demonstrate the SP//dr mech,” His voice was harsh, ringing with finality.

The Spider bristled at the touch, feeling it echo across the connection it shared with the Man, and hissed angrily. That was its human the official was touching. The affronted anger flowed through the link and the Spider felt its humans surprise and a burst of affection muddled the link between them. It flicked through fields and sheets of data, working its way through encryptions with startling speed, identifying each of the humans in the room, and finding the newest documents on the project, absorbing the information in numb silence.

There were personnel files on the Man, May and Ben, and even Myra, though she had never been involved in the project. There was a slip of a file on Peni, mostly related to her genetic compatibility to the project, and propositions for the future. All told, there was a lot and the Spider wondered why it hadn’t thought to look any of this information up before. Knowledge  _ was _ power and the more it could wield right now, the more it could keep this web of connection it found itself in intact. Or at least from being wholly torn apart.

‘Get in the mech,’ The Spider felt firm resolve as it sent the thought over the link and started to queue up the SP//dr mech’s warm up sequence. The time it had spent here in the lab, listening to everything had changed how it had looked at things, what it wanted. 

‘What?’ 

‘You heard me, Parker. Get in the mech and maybe we’ll both still have some of what we want when the day is over,’ The Spider nearly hesitated over using the Man’s family name. Being more familiar with him if they were really going to do this would be good. The name felt strange and foreign, though. It would hopefully get the Man to move.

It did. The Man looked down at Peni, cooing at her almost out of reflex as she blinked bleery dark eyes at him, before he turned to find May and wordlessly offer her the infant. His expression was hidden from the Spider, but the way May scrambled to take Peni and then adjusted her hold when the Man corrected how she was supporting the baby’s head said a lot.

The Man’s next words rang through both the room and the link, “Fine. Fine. We’ll demonstrate it.”

He crossed to the mech and the Spider triggered the door, letting it slide open fully, revealing the cockpit. The Man climbed inside and settled, fastening the safety harness and closing the door. It felt strange but comfortable- the Spider could feel both the mech and the Man’s body and its own, but it felt right, like this was the most normal thing in the world. The screens lit up, displaying the mech’s system data, showing that all systems were operating at optimal levels. All of them, even the one system that had shown red the previous times the Man had attempted this.

It only took a thought for the Mech’s fingers to twitch, tremble, and move, bracing on the floor of the lab as the mech straightened from where it had been parked in a crouch. This felt good, natural, the Spider noted distantly as its thoughts blurred slightly with The Man’s, even as it was annoyed that it had destroyed part of its own web this time. The mech was an extension of both of them, but there was none of the ungainly equilibrium issues that had plagued either of them when they had briefly swapped bodies.

‘The door’s exterior is a screen,’ came from the Man’s thoughts, closely followed by, ‘We can put messages, or pictures on it,’ from the Spider, who followed through on the idea with a smiley face emoticon as they took first one step, then another, coming to loom over the other people in the room.

The Spider appreciated the height as the Man was lost in quiet disbelief that this was even happening. It was the Spider that put out the mech’s hand to prod the official in the chest and in a generated voice so deep things buzzed said, “Leave. We are operational. The project is a success and ready to move to the next phase.”

All the humans flinched, even the Man who was jolted out of his daze to think, ‘Please don’t do that, that was very weird.’ 

The Spider shook off the buzz from the voice, ‘that was strange,’ it agreed and it found it never wanted to do that again. Meanwhile, nearly all the other humans had retreated several steps. Ben had an arm around May and Peni, holding onto them protectively as he stared up at the mech with wide, shocked eyes. Myra had jerked away from the man holding her at the voice, her eyes going wide as she stared up at the mech, no doubt envisioning the Spider inside and what she had seen on the security video.

The official that the mech had poked, meanwhile, just stood there, a satisfied smile working its way onto his face, “Finally, you’ve gotten your act together. I knew you were dragging your feet over something. It won’t change the situation with your daughter. You can’t raise her in a lab but,” He turned to look at Myra speculatively, “I’m sure we can work something out between us.”

The Spider thought it might dislike the official intensely. He was the man that had noted in Peni’s file that she might be a back up pilot if the project got off the ground and the Man’s sick horror at the thought bolstered the Spider’s dislike, as he reviewed the information it had found, including the propositions for how Peni was to be raised. The Man hadn’t known or suspected any of this. Being raised by the military to replace him if anything went wrong, not knowing any of her family, was a nightmare he had never considered.

The Spider hissed at the official, changing the emoticon on the screen. It wanted to keep the small family that it had found itself a part of. The more it found out, the more it got to know the Man, the more things changed between them... Its initial decision had been right at the time. There had been no respect or relationship between them. But now there was and there was more at stake than just itself or the Man. It changed its mind. 

It had made its decision, this was its family, and it was going to do its best to keep it intact.

* * *

Before her father died, Peni had always been on the fringes of things at school. The other kids had never seen her as a peer. She was too focused, she got too excited over the wrong things, she was- intense- about particular subjects. None of her classmates could hold a candle to her skill with tech. Her father was something of a household name. That last one should have made Peni popular, but it had just seemed to alienate her peers more. 

It wasn’t as if she even got to spend much time with the man, he was so busy with his work and his responsibilities. Sometimes she felt like an afterthought, forgotten until the end of everything. No matter how much he assured her that he loved her in their video calls or the time they had together, that he was doing this to protect her, she still felt alone. 

When she was five and her father brought her on a rare visit to the facility he worked in, it struck her that her that her father was never alone. He said that the little spider that operated as part of the mechs CPU was his partner, was as much or more important to the functioning of the mech than he, himself, was.

She had watched the tiny creature perched on her dad’s shoulder from where she sat on her hands on the bench. Mama had given her a lecture about not touching anything and to not inconvenience her father. And she was going to do her best. 

The Spider didn’t look scary. It was small and kind of cute and it had hopped up and down when she waved at it upon their introduction, and she’d squealed at it’s pretty colors. Her father had looked disappointed when Peni didn’t clamor to ask any questions. And Peni wanted to, so badly, everything was so interesting! What was the Spider like? Did it like reading? Could she hold it? It was difficult to not ask everything she wanted.

She wanted to look and touch and get dad to let her help with everything! But mama had said she was too little to do any real science and she would just inconvenience her dad. And asking ‘stupid’ questions always earned her a frown from mama when she couldn’t answer them. 

Dad had been loud and happy when he had picked her up, and she had been just as exuberant. They’d gone to get ice cream, and talked about the little building projects and programming games that Peni was doing (she’d showed him pictures on her tablet and the formulas and worksheets and programs, too), he had beamed at her, ruffling her hair, and calling her his ‘little spiderling’, his eyes crinkling in that way that meant he was laughing with you, not at you, even though what she was doing had to be so silly compared to what he was doing. 

And they’d stopped at the kiosk by the movie theatre where you could order any book you wanted and get both a physical bound copy, a novelty today, and an ebook version sent straight to your personal devices. It had been so cool! Peni had seen these once or twice before, but mama had always steered her away from them. 

Dad had asked whether she’d wanted anything and she’d toed the ground a little before admitting that she did. Peni had wanted it for weeks now, but mama had said the book was a little beyond her reading level. He had rolled his eyes at that and started going through the menu, pulling up the search screen to find it.

He’d gotten her the physical book even and laughed, scooping her up and whirling her around in a hug as she squealed over it, promising that he’d get the author to sign it, don’t worry, he knew her- they worked in the same lab, she’d be happy to meet Peni anytime! They could do it today, even! 

And they’d barely stopped talking to breathe until they’d arrived at the lab and then Peni had remembered what mama said and just shut down. Dad was at work and she shouldn’t distract him at work. He’d looked so disappointed, and the Spider had even seemed to droop. Neither had really understood why Peni seemed to lose interest. The Spider had made a hissing sound at her dad and started to scuttle from his shoulder down his arm.

Her dad had looked surprised, his eyes wide enough that white ringed his iris, then he squinted at her consideringly before looking back at the Spider. Peni looked down at the book beside her, biting her lip, trying to hold everything in.

“How would you like to hold Spider?”

The question caught Peni out of the blue and she blinked, her head jerking up to find her dad crouched before her, the Spider standing calmly on his open palm. It was so close she could see all the Spider’s eyes and it looked at her like it  _ knew _ her, knew what she wanted to do, wanted to ask, knew that she wanted to hold it and talk to it, too. It was unnerving. It was exciting! It was super cute!

She wanted to be involved in her dad’s work so much, if only so she could see him more. Peni pulled her hands out from under her legs, and held them together, palms upward, trying to mimic her dad, nearly quivering with excitement, “Yes! Yes, yes!”

He rocked backward on his heels with the force of her excitement, his face mirroring her own grin as he held his hands against hers so the Spider could cross over, “Careful, don’t try to grab him, just let him do his own thing. He won’t hurt you.”

And Peni had just looked at him in surprise, momentarily forgetting the Spider scuttling onto her palms. She’d never thought the Spider would hurt her, he worked with her dad, they were the Good Guys. Anyway, she’d never been afraid of spiders, and didn’t really get why anyone else would be. Had he heard about the spider at school? Did he think she’d been afraid of it?

The other kids had screamed over a spider they’d found two days ago, shrieking and yelling and, finally, smashing the tiny thing flat as it tried to scurry away from the noisy, threatening giants. She hadn’t seen why that one was scary, but she hadn’t been fast enough to rescue it and put it somewhere they’d leave it alone. She’d yelled at them and fat tears had leaked from her eyes and she’d felt like a baby for crying when the teacher had chastised her after she’d hit one of the other kids for killing the spider.

Then the tickling sensation of the Spider travelling up her arm distracted her, a giggle trickling out of her mouth. Her dad patted her cheek, his rough fingertips scritching ticklishly against her face and another giggle worked its way out, “How’re you doing, little bug?” He shifted, settling down on the floor in front of her with his legs crossed, “I thought you’d like it if I showed you some of my work stuff, but you got real quiet, so maybe I was wrong. Would you like to go do something else?”

Peni dipped her head and shook it in a tiny shake, looking at the Spider to avoid her dad’s eyes. She wanted to be here, this was what she wanted to do! She just. Didn’t want to be in the way. Mama said she was too little to do real science. 

When Peni spoke, she was so quiet her dad had to lean forward and strain to listen, “No, I wanna be here. I wanna help you, dad. I just… Mama said I’d be in the way if I got too excited or asked too many questions.” 

Her shoulders hunched the longer she talked until she had practically curled into a ball, hiding her face in her knees. There was a tickling at her cheek and she realized the Spider was patting her face with his forelimbs, those bright red eyes peering up at her, “Hi, you’re cute.”

She peeked up again as she heard her dad sigh. His eyes were squeezed shut and he pinched the bridge of his nose, and he sounded strained when he responded, “Your mother and I. are going to have to have a talk. Peni, I want to spend time with you and for you to be happy. Don’t restrain yourself because your mom said you’d be bothering me. She’s wrong about that, you’d never bother me. It makes me happy to see you so passionate.”

Peni slowly uncurled, the Spider making his way up her face and onto her forehead where he seemed to settle and made a sort of hissing noise at her dad and tapped his legs in a consistent pattern, startling a snicker out of her.

“Oh, don’t you start,” there was no heat in the words, though her dad followed them up with his own hiss, as he opened his arms to her invitingly, “Come on, little bug, wanna give your dad a hug? I’d love to show you everything I’m working on and answer all your questions. I’ll even teach you how to understand what Spider’s saying right now. Well, some of it.” 

In her hurry to scramble off the bench, Peni nearly tripped and her dad caught her and pulled her into his lap and pressed kisses all over her cheeks and nose as he hugged her amid her giggles. Peni tried to kiss the tip of his nose as he pulled back to grin down at her. At some point during the barrage of kisses, the Spider had crossed over to him and had settled in his hair with the satisfied air of someone who had won an argument, a last few firm taps of his feet conveying satisfaction.

“Come on, little spiderling, lets go do some science!”

That had been the first of the rare happy days Peni had gotten to spend with her father learning about what he did, talking about science and what Peni wanted to do when she grew up, and the classes she was taking. As she had gotten older he had talked about getting her a junior internship at the facility. She already had the skills for it, she was better with tech and programming than many scientists  _ his _ age. 

Some of the things she’d built were more advanced than his had been when he was a teenager. She was gonna do great things, he just knew it! The world would be at her fingertips. She’d have her choice of careers. He wanted so much to see it happen, he kept telling her.

But then Peni’s father had died and she had been given a choice. 

Her aunt and uncle had brought her to the facility and Peni had sat in numb silence in the lab that had been her father’s. Nearly everything had been cleared out and it was so, so empty. The futon against the wall had been stripped, and his papers and files were gone, as were all the notes and drawings that had been pinned to the walls. The paper cutouts he kept taped over the cameras were gone. It was cold and sterile and ready for the next researcher.

Peni knew that her aunt and uncle had worked with her father, she had seen them occasionally when she had gotten to spend days with her father. Once, she had even been allowed in the control hub, when an emergency had called her father and the mech and spider to action. She had watched the resulting fight, with her stomach tying itself in knots as her anxiety whirled tighter and tighter with every blow. When the fight was over she had barely made it to a trash can before she was messily sick. 

It was only when nothing else came up and she pushed the trashcan away that she realized she was crying and that her aunt and uncle were on either side of her, rubbing her back with hesitant, awkward hands. The room had been silent aside from her sobs, as the support workers avoided looking at her. Her uncle Ben had picked her up and carried her out. She had been able to tell that he was trying to be kind, that they both were, but neither were good with kids.

That day haunted her afterwards. How close he was to death, how often he fought to protect the city. She had always been happy to see him and spend time with him, but after that day, she had done her best to make the rare times they had together last, to make sure her father knew that she loved him and she wanted him to come back  _ safe. _ And now the worst had happened. 

And Peni had a choice to make. 

She felt numb. Hollow. Like her insides had been replaced by some echoing chasm that couldn’t be filled. Refused to be filled or covered or patched or bridged. Her head was filled with static. She had felt unmoored since that morning when, in the middle of a lecture on… something, everyone’s phones had gone off. First in ones and twos, little blips of noise, then as a mass, interrupting the teacher with a cacophony of sound.

Peni hadn’t looked at her phone. This wasn’t exactly uncommon. It tended to happen when there were big fights- announcements about the fights being over, that the area was clear or it was safe to travel. The state of the participants. It was practically routine now. And it wasn’t as if her father was uninvolved. Chances were the alerts were to do with one of his fights.

The teacher had tried to get the class back on track before giving up, their shoulders slumped in defeat as they checked the alert themselves and collapsed in the chair behind their desk. The room had gone eerily silent. Then, the whispering had started. And the staring. 

Peni had stiffened, feeling the weight of the eyes on her. It definitely involved her father. This had happened enough to be familiar, though none of the other alerts had been like this. This silence, broken by whispers, loomed as Peni squeezed her eyes shut and hoped that the teacher would announce that it was just injuries. Just damage. That whoever her father was fighting had died, even. She could deal with that. That had happened before.

There was a knock at the door. Peni listened to the click of the teacher’s shoes as they stood and went to answer it. She clutched her stylus in white-knuckled hands as she heard the murmurs and recognized the voice. 

Uncle Ben.

They had pulled her out of class. She wasn’t sure how all her things had ended up in her bag or how her bag had gotten onto her back. Uncle Ben and one of the security officers walked her to the quiet room at the end of the third story hall. The room that all the kids referred to as the “Bad News Room.” The artwork displayed on the walls blurred into a fog as Peni moved woodenly forward. The closer they got, the more she felt like her limbs were made of lead.

No. No, no, no, nonononono. The word blurred together in a litany as the door opened and she saw Aunt May sitting at the table in the center of the room. The principal and several other people were also there. There was a stack of papers sitting in front of Aunt May. Distantly, Peni guessed that it was homework. As if homework should even be a priority now. Now, when-

She didn’t finish the thought. It couldn’t be real. It couldn’t, it couldn’t. She didn’t want it to be real.

They’d been scheduled to have a day together soon. This weekend. She’d been going to ask him again if she could stay with him, instead of mom. She’d been wearing him down-

Aunt May stood up and Peni realized that she’d stopped in the doorway, frozen, staring at her aunt, at the people in the room, their expressions blurring, tears pooling in the corners of her eyes as the breath caught in her throat. 

No.

No.

No. No  _ nono. _

Her aunt touched her arm and, distantly, Peni was aware of what was happening as her uncle took her other arm and she was steered into the room and to a chair. Aunt May sat back down and Uncle Ben sat beside her, taking her hand. 

Peni sat numbly as the words washed over her, hands clenching and unclenching in the fabric of her skirt. Condolences. Fallen in the line of duty. There was more, something about her mother, but it all blurred together as the tears finally fell. There were pauses where they seemed to expect something but Peni couldn’t muster a response.

It felt like fire was tearing through her, rage and grief consuming everything and leaving her empty, empty,  _ empty. _ He couldn’t be gone. Her father couldn’t be dead. He and SP//dr were  _ unbeatable _ together. He’d  _ promised _ they’d work on his next project together. Peni sat and cried as the principal and her aunt and uncle talked. Peni didn’t care. What did it matter?

Her father was  _ dead. _

Finally, Aunt May and Uncle Ben stood and collected Peni and the pile of papers and they’d made their way outside, their hands on her shoulders the only thing keeping her moving. The trip to the facility had gone by in a haze of tears until they had run out. She was dehydrated, she noted distantly.

They’d come here, to this cold, nearly empty room, and they’d told Peni it was her choice to make. That Spider had been released into the room. That it would hurt if Spider accepted her. That she was the only person who could take her father’s place as the pilot of the SP//dr mech. Then they had left and shut the door behind them. Distantly, Peni thought they were probably still on the other side. She thought she’d glimpsed a gurney and medical technicians in one of the adjoining corridors when they had come in. Her father had said that being bitten had been one of the most painful things he had ever gone through, that he had nearly died. They probably thought something similar would happen with her.

It was cold. Peni hunched as she curled into a ball on her chair, pulling her legs up and wrapping her arms around them, burying her face in her knees. There was a tickle climbing up her leg and Peni flinched. Spider was here, on her. It would be over very soon. She clenched her eyes shut and shivered as the eight little legs continued their climb.

It hurt. It hurt so much. She missed him. Peni had known losing him was a possibility for years, since that day in the command center. She had loved him and known that he loved her, too. But she hadn’t been the only one he’d loved. He’d loved the city, too. He went out to fight because he wanted so much to keep everyone safe, he had wanted to keep her safe. 

And Peni might not have many friends, if any, but she’d always loved the city, too. How her father talked about it, how he lit up. She had wanted to join him, help him with his work when she was little. She had wanted to build additions for the SP//dr mech. She’d had so many ideas that could help him. And now he was gone, and the only way she could have any of what she had wanted would be if she took his place. 

If she didn’t… All the research and advancements would either be put in storage or handed off to someone else. It might even be destroyed. She didn’t know what would happen to the SP//dr mech, but Spider would probably be destroyed. 

And Spider had been connected to her father. When she was younger, she had had a silly idea about him being an extension of her father and had once snuck Spider out with her after their day together was done, because she had wanted more time with him. The Spider had seemed perfectly content with this, tapping happy little beats on her arm. 

He had made a web in her room and hung there calmly while she slept. She’d taken him to school the next day and gotten detention for breaking a classmate’s arm when he’d tried to smash Spider when he had crawled out from under her sleeve. Her father had turned up personally to retrieve the Spider and given her such a lecture. She hadn’t quite gotten the psychic link at that point. Apparently, he’d been going mad with fear with the Spider missing and, well, ignoring him. He had thought that some enemy had managed to steal the Spider and block their link. 

Upon finding out that Peni had snuck the Spider out for what was effectively a joyride, her father had given them both such a disappointed look, then sat down and asked why. And she had explained and apparently Spider had explained, too. And then her father had laid out where she’d been wrong in her assumptions and finally, finally explained the link properly. Explained what he and the Spider were to each other and how the SP//dr mech worked.

Remembering hurt, but she could feel the echoes of the fierce joy she’d felt working with her father. If she didn’t take his place his legacy would die, she would lose the last remnants of him that she had left. She didn’t want to lose the Spider. Or the Mech.

Peni could get up right now, and walk out. She could turn her back on the city and everything her father had worked for and the remains of everything that she had ever wanted. She wasn’t going to do that, though. Even though it hurt, she wouldn’t walk out. 

The Spider reached her knees and gently patted her forehead with a foreleg, tapping out an inquiry. Peni uncurled slightly, looking blearily at the little arachnid, those bright red eyes focused on her. Dimly, she recognized part of the tapping as “comfort,” though most of it was lost in her grief.

Peni shoved the grief and fear aside. If she was going to do this, the chair would not be the best place. It would be too easy to fall off. Bringing her hands up, she waited for the Spider to step calmly into her cupped palms before she uncurled fully and stood up to look around the room. There was the ground, she thought. No, that would be too cold. She shuddered, then remembered the futon.

Peni stumbled twice as she made her way to the futon and climbed on, letting the Spider scuttle off her hand before curling up on her side. The mattress might have been stripped, but it still smelled like her father, she thought, the soap he used and his aftershave, and something that was just him. It hurt. It would always hurt, though, maybe it would fade in time. The Spider settled in front of her, those bright eyes focused, limbs tapping a gentle question.

Peni closed her eyes and steeled herself before looking back at the Spider and offering her hand, “Do it.”

Peni had made her decision.

-

Waking was strange, in that it didn’t feel much different than normal, aside from an awful full body ache and the headache pounding behind her eyes. Peni had thought there would be more of a difference? She kept her eyes closed against the light, it felt like she was in the same position she had been in when she had offered Spider her hand. And her hand, well. She could feel the bite, it ached intensely. A throb that rolled through her and amplified her headache.

There was a presence in her head, though. A weight. It felt like a hug, warm arms wrapped around her, supporting her. It was nice, like her dad was holding her and rubbing circles on her back, murmuring reassurances. Then it hit her that he would never do that again. He couldn’t. That he was gone and she’d never touch him again or hear his voice outside videos or voicemails. Peni pulled her arm in, curling into a ball and pressing her face into the mattress as tears welled up and she choked back sobs and tried to block everything out. 

Peni didn’t notice the Spider as he sat in front of her, too wrapped up in her grief to connect the feeling of the mental hug to the arachnid. It was ok, the Spider understood, feeling her grief echo through him. There was as much grief in him, though he tried to keep it walled off to avoid swamping Peni and starting a cascade. His partner’s death had torn through the Spider, leaving him shocked and reeling at the loss.

Where there had been a mind linked to his, warm and vibrant, occasionally annoying, and filled with determination to finish the fight and ensure his city was safe, there was now a void. The partner who had shoved aside the pain of the damage they had taken was gone. There was- nothing. He had been cut off mid-word during the fight, dying without a sound. All the biometrics were flatlined and it was all the Spider could do to keep the SP//dr mech upright in the shock. 

The pain had hit the Spider moments later, wrenching and tearing, like his limbs were being plucked off one by one, and his fragile control over the mech had fumbled and it nearly collapsed as he suddenly bore the brunt of moving the mech alone. Finishing the fight had been a brutal struggle as the SP//dr mech slammed into their opponent. There was none of the finesse or care that Parker had employed. Just rage and grief as the Spider reduced the thing they had been fighting to scraps, ignoring everything coming from the control hub, ignoring the rubble and debris littering the area.

It had been all the Spider could do to get the shattered mech back to base, listening to the desperate, then tearful messages from Ben in the control hub, begging Parker to say that this was some sort of cruel joke, that the biometric readings were errors, anything but the truth. The shocked silence as he unlocked and opened the hatch and the broken body was removed and put on a gurney had given way to hushed murmurs, as support workers avoided looking at Ben and May. Ben was crying openly into May’s shoulder as they came forward. The Spider wavered as he crawled out of the mech and onto May’s hand. 

After that, things had moved in a blur as the Spider retreated into himself. Parker was gone. Gone, gone, gone. His partner had been there in his mind one second, and then there’d been nothing. His light snuffed out. May had brought the Spider back to Parker’s lab, setting him in the large, permanent web the Spider had constructed and maintained over the years. Distantly, the Spider was aware of humans coming in and methodically stripping the lab of everything that had made it Parker’s. Notes and paperwork were boxed up, tools organized and packed, clothing and personal items sorted and organized for storage or next of kin. 

Next of kin. Either Ben or Peni. The Spider doubted Myra made the cut considering Parker’s tension over how the woman treated Peni. And Ben probably wouldn’t be able to look at any of Parker’s things without blaming himself for years. The Spider may not have interacted with the man personally, but he had seen so much of him through Parker’s eyes and memories, listened to how they talked. Ben would always blame himself for his little brothers death.

Peni would want everything she could have of her father, the Spider knew, then remembered. The plans for this weekend. The Spider flinched, legs curling in on himself, at the thought. She had almost certainly been planning to ask if she could live with them, again. He and Parker had a hazy fantasy floating between them of just saying, “Yes,” to hell with what their handlers said. Now that could never happen.

Hearing Parker say no and feeling the pain and regret echo between them was bad, but seeing how much Peni dimmed every time had been worse. Like all her hopes were being thrown in the gutter and stomped on. The way Parker had put it, living with Myra had to feel like a slow suffocation for the girl, as her mother ignored her and her passions. The Spider hated the situation they had all been forced into. Peni deserved far better.

He had been looking forward to seeing her, seeing her specs for an addition to the mech, listening to how excitedly she’d talk through her ideas to him and her father. He had been looking forward to tapping replies to her in morse code. It certainly wasn’t how he would have communicated on his web or to Parker, but being able to talk back to her had been wonderful. She was going to be heartbroken.

Then the Spider paused, a memory rising from the whirling torrent of his mind. Back at the beginning, before he and Parker had really been partners, when they’d just been tied together by the bite and the link and the mech, he had found the file that Parker’s superiors had started on Peni. The notes that she would be a replacement candidate for the program should something happen to Parker. It froze the Spider, then he shifted and mentally reached for the SP//dr mech.

Activating and moving the mech from a distance was impossible, but he could use its systems to interface with the compound’s network. Peni was older now. They had to have a much larger file on her now, than when she was a baby. The mech’s systems responded sluggishly, but the Spider was soon working his way through the file network, bypassing security and checking all the likely files. Peni’s, it turned out, had been moved recently to a much more prominent spot than it had been when the Spider last checked, and it was much, much bigger.

There were observations about her technical aptitude, her schoolwork, relationships… A complete genetic profile comparison between her and her father, mapping out how she, too, was compatible with the SP//dr program. There were things about her mother, Parker, Ben and May, things about how they planned to keep her as tied to the program as Parker had been. 

The Spider felt rage building at that last set of files. Parker would have been happy to save the city for no other reason than to save it. He had loved it and it’s people. The web of debts and contracts that he had fallen into to save Peni and Myra had done nothing but hurt them all and tie his hands. Those debts and contracts had died with him. 

That they planned to trap Peni the same way Parker had been trapped set the Spider to hissing. She was a child, there was no way they could legally bind her like that if she did decide to take Parker’s place, but they would do their best to make her believe that they could. 

Ben and May wouldn’t be in any fit state to counsel Peni on the decision, as wrapped up in their grief as they were. They’d collect Peni from school later, after repairs were started on the mech and after their debriefs were wrapped up. Hopefully they’d make it there and collect her prior to the official press release going out. Peni deserved to hear the news from family.

The Spider hesitated as he copied all the files and bundled them all into his hidden directories, and made a note to start weaving parts of it into his web. He had copies of anything he had felt was particularly important, but… It was always best to have back ups. 

He didn’t think Peni would be in a fit state to listen to him before she made the decision. She would be very upset. Maybe she’d catch most of what he would tap at her, but she’d be in shock and they’d only have a limited window for her to make a decision before higher-ups decided it was a foolish decision to have a nine-year-old piloting a combat mech, or for them to interfere with the process, or convince Peni that she was obligated to fulfil her father’s contracts. 

It felt like a staggeringly short time before the lab had been stripped of everything identifying it’s previous occupant, except the Spiders massive web. The Spider pulled himself from his thoughts and shuddered, feeling truly alone for the first time in years. While he had been sorting through all the information and considering how to move forward upon Peni’s arrival the lab had been cleared and he was alone. It made the unfamiliar emptiness worse.

A chair had been set up in the middle of the room. It was near enough to a section of web that the Spider could get to it easily, but it was so lonely looking. Peni would be so small and alone in this bare room. The thought made the Spider want to curl into a small ball and never move again.

The Spider was pretty sure he knew what decision Peni would make. She was cut from the same cloth as her father, warm and brave and selfless, and willing to put others before herself even if she had trouble connecting to her peers. He’d do his best to make sure that Oscorp couldn’t convince her that she owed them. 

Once she was linked to him and the mech she would be able to bargain if she needed to, but the Spider was going to do his best to make sure that she didn’t have to. She was a child who would be struggling with the pain of losing her father and seeing everything she’d wanted come crashing down. She shouldn’t have to deal with predatory companies. The Spider might not be human but Peni was family. He would do anything he could to protect her, and over the years he had amassed enough sensitive information he could probably keep them in check.

With that resolve in mind, the Spider began the trek across the web to the point nearest the chair, then settled down to wait, periodically checking on Ben and May through the network.

An interminable time later, after Ben and May had finished their debriefs and cleaned up to go collect Peni, the Spider perked up at the sound of footsteps approaching the lab. Ben and May’s voices murmured in the corridor, but not Peni’s, though he caught the vibrations of her unique gait. The door opened and they all stepped in and lead Peni to the chair, talking to her all the while, explaining what would happen depending on what choice she made. Then they- then they just left, letting the doors close behind them and leaving a young girl to make a decision that would change the course of her entire life.

The Spider scoffed. He didn’t think Ben and May thought they were being cruel, but they certainly weren’t being kind. Peni deserved far better than this. She was so small sitting there below him, looking like she’d lost everything.

The Spider spooled out a length of silk and lowered himself down to her, alighting on her shoe as she pulled herself into a ball on the chair. Letting the silk thread go, the Spider began to gently climb up her leg. He felt her flinch and hesitated, all his eyes blinking. Going slowly wouldn’t make this any easier or less painful for either of them, though. 

He continued up, climbing over her arms where they wrapped around her and then gently tapped at her forehead as he found her face buried in her knees, asking if she was ok, and letting her know that he would give her all the hugs she wanted if he could. He had eight legs, he should be able to give so many good hugs. That had always made her laugh before, but the look she gave him as she uncurled said that she had missed most of the message.

Her cheeks were stained with tears and she looked tired and wrung out, like she had pulled marathon all-nighters, and it struck the Spider again just how much she took after her father. He’d worn similar looks when missions had ended badly and he hadn’t been able to save everyone. 

Determination overshadowed Peni’s grief and pain as she met the Spider’s eyes. As her hands came up for him, he felt a grim sort of relief. They were on the same page, then. The Spider stepped into Peni’s hands as she fully uncurled and looked around. Then her gaze settled on the futon.

Letting someone else move him was still something the Spider was divided on, even after all these years. Parker had been ok, once the Spider had overcome the negative memories from their bite, and May and Ben had always been hesitant, but Peni had always been open and enthusiastic when it came to interacting with him. The one time he had accompanied her home and to her school had been an enlightening and entertaining time, though it had driven Parker up the wall with worry when he’d found the Spider missing and unresponsive over the link. 

In the end, though, he had been, if not relieved by some of the information the Spider had been able to give him afterward, at least able to forgive him for going AWOL. He hadn’t known quite what Peni’s living situation with her mother was like. How her mother  _ acted _ toward her. 

The Spider’s thoughts caught on Myra as Peni climbed onto the futon. Myra would probably wholly disown Peni once she was connected to the Spider. That was what had spelled the end of her relationship with Parker, after all. The Spider wasn’t sure if Peni would find that to be a relief or another thing to grieve over. He shoved the thought away. 

He would do his best to help Peni deal with it however it played out. He scuttled off of Peni’s hand as she settled. The girl curled up on her side and offered her hand. The Spider hesitated. He hoped this would be gentler than the creation of his link with Parker. That had been a mess. It had taken them so long to understand why, too. He didn’t want to subject Peni to that. He tapped out, “Are you sure?”

“Do it,” Peni looked at him, tears in her eyes and determination vibrating in her voice. She was very much her father’s daughter and the Spider wondered if she knew it as he stepped forward and selected a place, then bit, carefully injecting the venom and hunkering down to wait for the connection to take hold.

Peni seemed to sigh as she closed her eyes, and then everything went white.

-

Relief flooded the Spider as he woke. He ached, yes, but they hadn’t been moved. Peni hadn’t gone through the medical emergency her father had gone through when the first link was created. She was still out, but he could feel Peni, her mind caught in a fading dream, feel their connection solidifying moment by moment. The Spider reached across and tried to press as much affection around her as he could. He didn’t want her to wake up thinking she was alone in the world. 

She  _ wasn’t _ alone and she would never be again if the Spider had anything to say about it. 

**Author's Note:**

> Despite the director stating that Peni's father is Peter Parker, I've decided to leave his identity deliberately ambiguous because he's never clearly identified in the comics other than as Peni's father, which leaves it to the reader to decide if he's Richard Parker or Peter Parker and, while I enjoy the idea of Peni being her universe's Peter Parker equivalent, I wanted to leave it open for the reader. I also just didn't think the Spider would give a damn what his name was in a beginning. So there's that, too.


End file.
